


please don't say i'm going alone

by amyscascadingtabs



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Episode: s03e23 Greg and Larry, F/M, Flashbacks, Fluff and Angst, Missing Scene, angst with fluffy parts, it's a little sad but there's happy parts I promise, set after 3x23
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-24
Updated: 2018-06-24
Packaged: 2019-05-27 23:07:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15035318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amyscascadingtabs/pseuds/amyscascadingtabs
Summary: He hates the Universe because he has a single hour left of hugging a girlfriend who is now asleep by pure post-crying exhaustion, an hour left of trying to memorize every little detail about her. He hates the Universe because there's only a month left until their one year anniversary and now they won’t get to celebrate it together, because she just spent all too much time away from him undercover in prison in Texas and now they're being separated again, because her face is puffy and pink from crying and he thinks his might be as well.Or, what went through Jake’s head before he said goodbye to Amy for Florida.





	please don't say i'm going alone

**Author's Note:**

> This was actually kind of a semi-prompt from tumblr user @alwaysandbeyond who wondered aloud in the tags why Jake chose the selfie of Amy he has with him in Florida and prison and said that someone should write a fic about it. Truth be told I’ve always been curious about this so I… wrote the fic. Hope you like the result!
> 
> title from ends of the earth by lord huron

Jake has two hours before the first of four cars that will take him and Holt to witness protection in Florida arrives. He spends them both at Amy’s apartment. There’s no use in packing if he’s not allowed to bring anything with him; no use in anything but hugging his girlfriend so tight he fears he is squeezing her small frame to pieces, all while telling her repeatedly he loves her and won’t forget about her.   
  
Not a great promise, considering he has the memory of a goldfish.   
  
But he remembers emotions. He remembers anything that caused a strong emotional response at the time or still does.    
  
So yes, he’ll remember the woman who has made him feel love in all its different kinds - from aching, unrequited infatuation to the effortless and tender-hearted commitment they’ve reached after almost a year. He’ll remember the fierce but quirky, competitive but lovable detective who just told him she loves him so much and wants to move in with him until he’s old and gray-haired and rotting away in a retirement home in Coral Palms.   
  
“They’ll get you out of Witsec”, Amy keeps on repeating for their first ten minutes of their two last hours together, while Jake can’t stop imagining the nightmare scenarios of never getting home again. “We’ll get you out. We’ll catch Figgis. You’ll come home. You have to come home.”   
He agrees with her. Both of them know nothing's for sure and maybe they really will never see each other again, but last hours are better spent pretending than accepting brutal realities. There will be plenty of time to do so in Florida, he assumes.    
  
Amy cries. Long, heaving sobs shake through her body and her tears dampen his t-shirt when she’s pressed tight against him, the two of them together on her bed for the last time in a long while. He tries not to think about how her bed would have been their bed someday soon if Figgis hadn’t called when he did.    
  
_ We should move in together. _   
  
_ Haha _ , said the Universe.  _ Very funny. _   
  
Jake officially hates the Universe.   
  
He hates the Universe because he has a single hour left of hugging a girlfriend who is now asleep by pure post-crying exhaustion, an hour left of trying to memorize every little detail about her. He hates the Universe because there's only a month left until their one year anniversary and now they won’t get to celebrate it together, because she just spent all too much time away from him undercover in prison in Texas and now they're being separated again, because her face is puffy and pink from crying and he thinks his might be as well.    
  
He knows he won’t forget her, but he also knows he cannot possibly remember everything, because there's so much to notice about Amy Santiago he’s discovering new things every single day. Some days it’s the cutest constellation of moles at the small of her back, some days a brand new meal she can actually cook without burning the kitchen down or poisoning them both, and one day she even tells him the back-story about a tiny dot in white ink on the foot; a relic from one of the few times she got drunk at a college party and wanted to know what getting tattooed felt like. Other days he discovers how the shape of her eyebrows change marginally sometimes because she claims it’s impossible to fill them in exactly the same every day, or how the sparkling gleam in her eyes when he tells her he loves her is different from the one she gets when she’s really excited over a case, but not all too different from when she’s truly engaged in re-reading the Harry Potter novels for the umpteenth time.   
  
(Jake’s not yet sure if he should take it as an insult or a compliment to mean roughly as much to her as he’s discovered those seven books do. From the amount of Ravenclaw or Hogwarts-stamped paraphernalia he keeps finding in various places over her apartment, he’s hoping for the latter.)   
  
No photograph could capture the all-consuming focus in her expression when she watches Jeopardy or how melodious her laugh sounds when it's untamed and authentic. Her quick-witted comebacks or the adorable way she scrunches her nose when Hitchcock says something distasteful couldn’t ever be framed into a picture, no matter how skilled the photographer. He knows he’d find every single one perfect, but they still wouldn't capture enough.   
  
Maybe he should follow the orders someone gave him and abstain from bringing anything personal to Florida.   
  
On the other hand, maybe it could be helpful to have something physical there to ground him. Something to look at to know she’s real and exists somewhere out there, something to remind him she’s more than an intricate and hyper-realistic daydream, might help during all the months and maybe even years he’ll be stranded without her. It’ll have to be a photograph. A picture won’t capture any of her intelligence or humor, but there’s a chance it could capture a sliver of the ethereal beauty she is and right now a chance of a sliver is all he needs. The question is simply which one.   
  
He has a ton of pictures of her in uniform or with other members of the squad, all unusable. A picture of her at work would be too difficult to explain should someone see it. No cop pictures.   
  
There are even more dorky selfies of the two of them together, making funny faces or even trying to hold the camera up and kiss at the same time, but right now only seeing them so free and happily unknowing is an all too painful sting. And a picture of him with a girl would be even yet more suspicious if he got caught; there’d be no way for him to deny ever knowing the woman in the picture and he’d be screwed. No couple pictures.   
  
It doesn't leave him with much. For a moment he’s scared no picture on his phone lives up the necessary requirements, until he swipes far enough to reach a collection of shots he’s nearly forgotten.   
  
The pictures are from approximately two months into their relationship, back when everything was still new and a little intimidating. They’re taken in his apartment, and if he closes his eyes, he remembers the moment clear as day.   
  
****

* * *

****  
**nine months earlier**   
  
“There are so many Die Hard pictures in your camera roll. Honestly, Jake - aren’t some of these identical?” Amy’s on his couch, taking up most of the space with her head on one armrest and her feet in his lap. They’re looking through each other’s phones for some trivial reason mostly to do with boredom; it began with Jake needing help to spot spelling errors in a text, and now they’re having too much fun looking at pictures in the other person’s gallery to stop.   
“I don’t know that for sure and I’m not deleting any of them until I have proof!” He tickles her left foot with his free hand, the corners of his mouth twitching when it makes her giggle.  “And you have way too many pictures of laminated documents to get to tease me about Die Hard.”   
“I’m confident I could prove some of these are the same. And lam' jobs are important! I have a blog!”   
“And I follow said blog! Because I’m an awesome supportive boyfriend!”   
“Then where are all the pictures on your phone of me, huh? The ones you show your college buddies when you’re having a beer together and bragging about the attractiveness of whatever girl you’re hooking up with?” He can tell she’s trying to fake seriousness, but she keeps interrupting herself with fits of laughter. “Isn’t that what all white heterosexual cis men do when they meet up?”   
“Amy Santiago, how dare you assume I’m straight?” He’s the one laughing now, his grin growing wider from the sight of hers. “And I have plenty of pictures of you. I think. I had to delete some because I was running out of space for Die Hard stills.”   
“Maybe I should solve the issue. I’m deleting all the Die Hard stills I know you have doubles of and replacing them with selfies.”   
“Real mature, Ames.” His eyes light up when an idea hits him. “Ooohh, wait - will there be selfies of you in just a bra? Without one?”   
“Yeah, I’m the immature one of us two right now”, she scoffs, but the smile on her lips lets him know she’s not really mad. “And no, there won't, because I’m classy. And afraid of you leaving your phone on your desk and Charles somehow finding them.”   
“You know he’d just be ecstatic I had them.”   
“That makes it worse. Now, I need to get to work.” She sits up straight and holds out the phone a little bit in front of her so it captures part of the wall behind her as well. “This is serious business.”   
  
Jake lets the camera click once, twice, before he dives forward and into the frame. The sudden impact of his weight against her makes Amy fall to the side, and the next few shots come out blurry as he attacks her with a little sloppy but mostly playful kisses.   
“You’re ruining the pictures”, she whines.   
“Nah, I’m making them better”, he claims then and puts the camera app on timer before pressing another kiss to her lips. “Now I can show my hypothetical college buddies pictures of me kissing you, so they’ll know you’re for real.”   
“That would be an issue?”   
“Oh yeah, they would never believe I was actually dating you. You’re way too pretty.” He swipes through the collection of pictures of them kissing they’ve taken now, showing her the few of them that turned out reasonably sharp.   
“ _ You’re _ way too pretty!”   
“You’re prettier.”   
“No, you are - oh god, we really are that horrible lovey-dovey couple everyone hated in high school, aren’t we?” Amy hides her face in her hands. “What have we even become?”   
“Doesn’t matter, because these pictures are hella adorable. I won’t even delete them for more Die Hard stills.”   
  


* * *

  
  
He desperately wants to take one of those cheesy pictures with him to Florida. Even in the less sharp ones, it’s evident to anyone with a functioning pair of eyes how happy they are, and it makes Jake curse silently when he remembers that happiness is being taken from them now, picked up and dumped right into a coursing river of destruction by Figgis.   
  
(He should’ve just become an accountant or something equally mind-numbing because at least then he would never have to leave her.)   
  
But a picture of the two of them together is too risky and too revealing of his past, so he options for the second best thing - one of the few selfies Amy captured before he joined her. She looks considerably more serious in this picture than in the next one, her lips more a shy smirk than the wide grin she has in the pictures with him, but she looks gorgeous enough for him to want to look at it forever. More importantly, it’s a reminder the next pictures exist. It’s a fragment of a memory of better times, and it’s all he’s brave enough to bring.   
  
There’s a buzz from the Bluetooth printer on the desk in Amy’s bedroom as the picture begins to print. Her head shifts a little from where it’s resting on his chest, startled by the sudden noise, and he very nearly starts crying again, because in fifty minutes he’ll be separated from her with nothing more to keep than the selfie he already knows he’ll be staring at until he’s memorized every inch.   
  
He’s not going to forget her.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry if this made you cry because it kind of made me cry. I’ll upload another baby drabble in a few days if that makes it better??
> 
> Kudos and comments and everything are always welcome because like every fic writer I live for that sweet sweet validation!! 
> 
> Last but not least feel free to chat w/ me about these dorks or anything else @amyscascadingtabs ! ❤


End file.
